Yeah yeah yeah, p.14
Yeah! Yeah! Yeah!, page 14
• • • • •
By the beginning of June 1966, the Beatles were putting the finishing touches on their new album, Revolver, which was perceived by them as representing “a new British sound,” if not a brilliant leap forward. “Taxman,” with its looping bass lines and savage guitar solo, was an amazing contribution from George Harrison, who was becoming quite a talented songwriter. And earlier that month, “Eleanor Rigby” had been given the full symphonic treatment, featuring a double string quartet: four violins, two violas, and two cellos.
The Beatles and George Martin at Abbey Road studio. © MICHAEL OCHS ARCHIVES/REDFERNS
The Beatles let their hair down for one of the album’s final tracks. On “Yellow Submarine” they gave a comic edge to a children’s song Paul had written by layering it with wisecracks and sound effects from childhood. The studio’s vast wooden floor was littered with noisemaking devices, including chains, ship’s bells, handbells, tap-dancing mats, whistles, wind machines, thunderstorm machines—every oddity they could lay their hands on. A cash register was dragged out, along with several buckets, a set of bar glasses, even an old metal bathtub that was promptly filled with water.
“They had a whole crowd of people to do the effects,” recalled their engineer. Friends, wives, and girlfriends were recruited to rattle and clink various hardware. The Beatles’ chauffeur swirled chains through the bath, junior engineers made whooshing noises. Everyone laughed and hooted as the tape captured the hijinks. At some point, after hours of overdubs, one of the band’s equipment men strapped on a bass drum and, bashing away, led a conga line around the cluttered studio while everyone chanted the memorable chorus: “We all live in a yellow submarine…” It was party time at Abbey Road.
• • • • •
But soon enough it was back to work for another world tour.
Flying was part of the Beatles’ job description, and on June 27 they were back in the air, en route to Japan. A fierce storm raging in the China Sea forced them to stop in Alaska until the danger passed. Nearly twenty hours later, the plane landed in the middle of the night at Tokyo’s Haneda Airport, where the storm may have passed, but not the danger. The Beatles were greeted by a plainclothes police commissioner who warned them about threats against the band by a Japanese cult. If the Beatles played in a certain arena where no Westerner had ever set foot, he told them, it was said they would not leave Tokyo alive.
None of the Beatles took the threat seriously—but the Japanese authorities did. As a result, the boys had an armed motorcycle escort wherever they went in Tokyo. Security was even tighter at the Tokyo Hilton, which was turned into an armed camp. All the bedrooms around them were allocated for the police. “We were locked up in the hotel for a long time,” recalled Paul. The Beatles were irritable and growing increasingly restless. “It was their first time in the Far East,” said a business associate, “and they’d been looking forward to getting out. They resented being cooped up like zoo animals.”
The Beatles arrive at Heathrow Airport to fly out on another tour, 1966. © MIRRORPIX
The trip to the concert hall was even more difficult. “We had to go under about twenty bridges, which is where all the police stood with guns,” remembered a colleague. Fans were kept in penlike structures at specific points along the route and under armed guard. Throughout the trip, the Beatles were mostly silent, gazing at the scenery, trying to get a feeling for where they were. Everything looked so different and strange. It was unlike anything they’d experienced before.
Things really began to unravel in the Philippines. First of all, when the Beatles dis-embarked from the plane they were put on a boat until their belongings cleared Customs and their hotel room was ready. “We were all sweating and frightened,” recalled George. Security was tight; a quarter of Manila’s police force had been detailed for Beatles duty.
Meanwhile, a note attached to their itinerary indicated that they were to call on the First Lady, Imelda Marcos, at the palace before their first concert. The Beatles’ policy was never to go to government functions, so Brian Epstein declined the invitation. The next morning, a general and a commander from the Philippine army, both in crisply starched uniforms, showed up at the hotel to make final arrangements for the Beatles to attend the palace function. “We’ll do nothing of the sort,” Brian informed them. “We’re not going to go.”
The trouble started later that day. The Beatles played a rousing show to an enthusiastic audience of 35,000 fans under a blistering sun. Back at the hotel before the evening show, they turned on the TV to watch coverage of their concert. On one channel, there was footage of the palace, showing how invited guests had waited but been stood up by the Beatles. An announcer implied that the Beatles had insulted President and Mrs. Marcos.
Things got ugly after the Beatles’ evening performance. For one thing, their police escort disappeared. Then, when their car pulled up to the hotel gates, it was clear they had been locked out. As if on cue, several dozen troublemakers converged on the car, banging on the windows and rocking the vehicle. Finally, their car rammed the gates. As they raced to the hotel entrance, doors flew open, and everyone then ran into the hotel, two steps ahead of the angry throng.
At the hotel, the staff now refused to provide them with room service, and their phones had been shut off. Then “things started to get really weird,” as Ringo recalled it. When they tried to leave the hotel, the elevators had been shut off. The halls were dark but lined with hotel staff shouting threats at the Beatles in Spanish and English. “It was very, very frightening,” one of their entourage recalled. When they got downstairs, the lobby was deserted, with no security in sight. Even their cars were gone.
George receiving instruction in playing the sitar as the other members of the Beatles look on, July 5, 1966. © BETTMANN/CORBIS
“Nobody would give us a ride,” George recalled. Someone managed to get them a car, but the drive to the airport was sabotaged by soldiers who kept motioning their car onto ramps that led in circles. Inside the terminal, the airline desks were empty and the escalators were shut off. On the tarmac, a crowd of two hundred men, many in military uniform, had gathered, waving pistols or clutching clubs. “Nobody was helping us do anything,” George remembered, “but people were trying to grab us, and other people were trying to hit us.” Police shoved them from one side of the room to the other, like a game of Ping-Pong using the Beatles. According to Ringo, “They started spitting at us, spitting on us.”
After about fifteen minutes, everyone was allowed to run across the tarmac to the plane. The terrified Beatles climbed the stairs into the cabin. It was hot, over ninety degrees, but they were relieved. Once the plane was in the air, the Beatles were unusually quiet. Whatever the reasons for the situation, they decided, it mustn’t ever happen again.
From the moment they landed in India, so George could buy a sitar, an Indian string instrument, the Beatles discussed the possibility of not touring again. Ever. “Who needs this?” was an oft-heard lament. They were tired of simply going through the motions, tired of acting like the four wax dummies sent out to satisfy the crowds. “I prefer to be out of the public eye anyway,” George said. After Shea Stadium, John had never hidden his dislike for stadiums filled with screaming kids. They agreed that it was unlikely the Beatles would tour again.
Sparked by John’s comment that the Beatles were more popular than Jesus, young fans in Waycross, Georgia, prepare to burn albums at a bonfire in protest, August 1966. © BETTMANN/CORBIS
Brian heard these rumblings and fell into a dark mood. To make matters worse, the flight home was awful; several of the Beatles got food poisoning. When they landed, everyone went their separate ways for a rest. But on the fourth day, just as Brian had settled in comfortably at a beachside getaway, he got a call from one of his assistants in London. You’d better get back immediately, she told him. They had real trouble on their hands.
• • • • •
“Christianity will go. It will vanish and shrink….” The words sounded vaguely familiar to Brian as he listened to a telegram. “We’re more popular than Jesus now.”
It was part of a newspaper interview that John had given a few months back. They were just a few old offhand remarks, not really serious, but a cheesy American magazine had reprinted them in a sensational way, taking them out of context, with sleazy-sounding headlines. The reaction was predictable. Some disc jockeys in the South banned the playing of all Beatles records and sponsored a community bonfire so people could burn their albums. Things grew even more ridiculous. One station in Texas “damned their songs eternally.” A minister in Cleveland threatened to revoke the membership of anyone in the congregation who played Beatles records. Boycotts were announced in communities in Kentucky, Georgia, Mississippi, South Carolina, and upstate New York. And word had it that nutcases were threatening to assassinate John Lennon if the Beatles came to Memphis, one of the scheduled stops of the upcoming American tour.
The Beatles, according to Paul, “didn’t really take it too seriously at all.” Brian publicly called the controversy “a storm in a teacup.” Even John said, “I’d forgotten all about it.” Nevertheless, Brian persuaded John to apologize for his remarks. There was too much at stake, he argued, with another American tour set to begin in just a few weeks. “And in the end,” Ringo said, “John realized that he’d have to go out and do it.”
Even after John’s public apology, however, the tour was tension packed. The Beatles hadn’t wanted to do the tour in the first place, but Brian had talked them into it. “By the time we got to Memphis,” a colleague remembered, “there was a strong rumor that something truly violent could happen.” Brian was very nervous. “He was convinced some nut was going to take a shot at John,” his lawyer recalled. There had been some discussions about canceling the Memphis concert, but the Beatles insisted on appearing. “If we cancel one, you might as well as cancel all of them,” Paul insisted.
John wore a troubled look as their plane made its descent into Memphis. “You are a very controversial person,” Paul said to him, without his usual cheery note. Only George managed to shed some humor on the situation as they taxied to a stop. “Send John out first,” he quipped. “He’s the one they want.”
“Taxman”
Like many topical songs, “Taxman” sprang from anger and disillusionment. After the success of Help!, George endured a despairing meeting with the Beatles’ accountants. “I had discovered I was paying a huge amount of money to the taxman,” complained George. “Well, I don’t want to pay tax. It’s not fair.”
George’s response would open the Revolver album. Everything is taxable, according to the accountant in the song: the street, your seat, the heat, your feet. No matter what you do or how much you have—pay up and shut up. And it doesn’t stop there. After you are dead, he advises listeners, be sure to “declare the pennies on your eyes.”
“Taxman” was as sly and critical as anything that was being written. And of course John threw in a few one-liners to help the song along, accompanied by Paul’s looping bass lines and the song’s signature guitar solo.
As far as first-rate songwriting went, with “Taxman,” George had arrived.
Their first show went off like any other. There was the typical pandemonium, plenty of crying and screaming; girls littered the stage with stuffed animals and other gifts. Understandably, the Beatles’ mood improved. “Everyone started to relax,” recalled an observer. The second show was also packed with more than twelve thousand delirious kids. It was a great rave-up, until midway through the third song, “If I Needed Someone,” when a shot rang out. Brian, who was standing at the side of the stage, crouched down. Paul and George jerked sideways toward John, who was straddling the mike. Later, Paul explained to a reporter how “when he heard [the blast] his heart stopped, but he realized he was still standing and didn’t feel anything. He looked at John and saw that he was still standing, so they all kept right on playing.”
Kids. Two teenagers had lobbed a cherry bomb from the upper balcony.
The Beatles fought back. Their playing was unusually sharp, full of snap and bite, and for the moment they gave it all they had. But they were put off by the whole crazy atmosphere. George especially was fed up with the chaotic life of the Beatles. In discussions with friends, he talked of feeling “wasted” and virtually “imprisoned” by Beatlemania. The touring had beat him up. “It had been four years of legging around in screaming mania,” he grumbled. He was bored and dispirited.
Ringo Starr and Paul McCartney look out an aircraft window. © MIRRORPIX
“Nobody was listening at the shows,” complained Ringo, who said he “was fed up with playing” in such a haphazard manner. It was impossible for him to hear what the others were doing onstage, forcing him to play along to their movements rather than the music. Ringo had always been a sport; he’d always done whatever was asked of him, whatever was best for the band. He’d played the role that was required of him, but his heart wasn’t in it anymore.
And to John, the whole scene was a dreadful experience. “I didn’t want to tour again,” he said. He had had it with playing crazy gigs. Besides, he felt the music was stale. “I couldn’t take it anymore,” he said.
A series of accidents in Cincinnati and St. Louis underscored the Beatles’ distaste for the road. Cincinnati was a disaster. It rained before showtime as the Beatles arrived at Crosley Field, but with a ballpark full of soggy fans determined to see their idols, the boys seemed inclined to appear despite the weather. “They’d brought in the electricity,” George recalled, “but the stage was soaking, and we would have been electrocuted.” The crowd kept screaming, “We want the Beatles!” Paul grew so upset at the prospect of going on stage that he got sick in the dressing room. Eventually, Brian called off the show—“the only one we ever missed,” George pointed out—but they played a makeup the next day before flying out.
The weather followed them to St. Louis. “There were sparks flying all over the place,” recalled a stagehand. “Every time Paul bumped into the mike, which was almost every beat, there were sparks.” After the show, during a narrow escape inside the container of a chrome-paneled truck, all the damage finally caught up with the Beatles. “We were sliding around trying to hold on to something,” Paul recalled, “and at that moment everyone” decided they’d had enough of touring. There was no point in pretending anymore. Even Paul admitted he’d had enough; the touring, to him, “had become spiritually rather empty.” The Beatles would make more than enough money from continued record sales as well as other projects that came along. It was time to call it quits—and easier to walk away now, while they were still on top.
“We didn’t make a formal announcement that we were going to stop touring,” Ringo recalled. Nevertheless, the matter was settled among them. The concert in San Francisco would be their last. There would be no more Beatles shows, no more participation in the lunacy of Beatlemania. From now on, they would exist solely in the studio as a band that made records.
Candlestick Park was a notoriously windswept arena, with its outfield facing onto San Francisco Bay, but that Monday night, August 29, gusts whipped through the stands with a vengeance. Banners strung around the stadium flapped ferociously against the squall, and drafts picked up great clouds of dust and blew them volcanically across the infield. The stands were only half filled, with 25,000 Beatles fans huddled against the cold.
The performance itself was nothing extraordinary. The Beatles sang eleven songs—the same eleven totally familiar studio-recorded versions they’d been singing for four years, with one or two exceptions—using the same patter, the same tired jokes. “The boys were very tired indeed and couldn’t wait to get that last show over,” recalled their press manager. John had nothing left in his tank. He didn’t hesitate for a moment when it came to leading the charge off the field and disappearing with the others into a waiting armored truck. A great feeling of release washed over him as the van kicked up dust, speeding toward the right-field bullpen, toward the end of Beatlemania.
George also sighed and settled into the momentous finale. “I was thinking, ‘This is going to be such a relief—not to have to go through this madness anymore,’” he recalled. There was an air of satisfaction as their plane took off for Los Angeles. Sinking into the seat next to their press manager, George closed his eyes, smiled, and said, “Right—that’s it. I’m not a Beatle anymore.”
Chapter 10
WE’VE HAD IT
Not touring anymore brought the Beatles no instant peace. Instead of giving them the kind of quiet they had hoped for, the whole world took up their case, talking around the clock about the Beatles and wondering about their future. Were they finished? And at such young ages, barely in their midtwenties? “Is Beatlemania Dead?” Time magazine wondered at the end of 1966. Even the band’s closest friends didn’t have the answer. Certainly Revolver had defied all predictions and won vast popular acclaim. It was packed with great songs, including “Eleanor Rigby,” “Good Day Sunshine,” and “Got to Get You into My Life,” and sold millions of copies while giving fans and musicians alike something extraordinary.
In July, John was offered a minor role in a new movie comedy called How I Won the War. He not only agreed but promised to cut his famous hair to a length befitting a proper English soldier. But working as a supporting actor proved excruciatingly boring. In Germany and southern Spain, where most of the action was filmed, John spent most of his time just “hanging around,” waiting for his scenes to be called. To kill time, John relied on his guitar. Music would provide for him. It always had. “He used to sit cross-legged on the beach or on the bed, working out a melody,” recalled Michael Crawford, who costarred in the film and shared a house with John. It was there, Crawford said, “I heard him playing the same bar over and over again.” “Living is easy with eyes closed, misunderstanding all you see…” The tune had a dreamy feel to it. Crawford was struck by its beauty. “Really, it’s good,” he told John. “I wouldn’t mess with it.”
